


how did we get here (when i used to know you so well)

by wearethenorth



Series: with great power [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Multi, sansa is captain america because we need that in the world, that one au with asoiaf characters in the mcu universe bc why not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1930356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearethenorth/pseuds/wearethenorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I find that it's easier to keep your true self buried under several layers of untrue selves,” she says. “To protect yourself.”</p><p>“That’s not a good way to live.”</p><p>“No. But it’s a good way not to die.”</p><p>The rest of the drive to the abandoned military base is quiet, and Sansa thinks that maybe Margaery has a point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how did we get here (when i used to know you so well)

**Author's Note:**

> ok ok so i was watching cap 2 (for like the 500th time but who's counting?) and I thought holy hell Steve reminds me of Sansa just now  
> (how he's learning to adapt to a totally different world than the one he's known and has to go against morals and everything to survive)  
> and then i came up with this

“He’s a ghost story,” Margaery says. Sansa’s fingers clench tighter around the lapels of the shorter woman’s leather jacket, as if daring her to lie.

“I need more information,” she clenches her teeth and tries to ignore the echo of Doran Martell’s wheelchair clattering to the floor in the back of her mind. “You have it.”

“I don’t—“

“Somebody shot the director of SHIELD in the middle of my apartment, Margaery. Petyr Baelish has declared me a _fugitive_. Now is not the time to test my patience.”

The Black Widow—aptly named for her habit of leaving dead husbands in her wake—narrows her eyes at the barely concealed threat. For a moment, Sansa thinks she might put up a fight, but Margaery relaxes into her grip and leans against the wall of the hospital, eyes lidded but gaze calculating.

“Do you plan on going after him?”

Sansa thinks back on the familiar gleam in the assassin’s eyes as he hurled her shield back at her with a strength to rival her own, his metal arm gleaming in the moonlight.

“Yes.”

“Good, I’m coming with you.”

Before she can protest, Margaery continues.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists,” she says. “The ones who do call him the Winter Soldier.”

“You know him.” It isn’t a question.

Margaery winces, her hand dropping to her abdomen. “I was standing between him and a target on a mission in Pentos. He shot the guy right through me. Still sore about it, but it wasn’t even in the official report. Rumor has it he’s got over two hundred confirmed assassinations over the past fifty years.”

There’s more Margaery’s not telling her, but Sansa can see the haunted look in her eyes—the one she sees every time Margaery thinks nobody’s looking—and so she drops it, drops her, and the two are out of the hospital before any SHIELD personnel can raise the alarm.

The flash drive Doran had given her points to an abandoned SSR base in New Jersey, and the coordinates niggle at Sansa’s memory.

They steal a car—well, _borrow_ it—and they’re on the road.

“Where’d you learn to hotwire a car?”

“Nazi Germany. And we’re taking it back so get your feet off the dash.”

“Right,” Margaery rolls her eyes but does as she’s told. “Sometimes I forget you’re over seventy.”

Sansa snorts, because Margaery rarely lets _her_ forget it.

“No, really. You’ve adjusted to twenty-first century life surprisingly well, all things considered.”

_Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who can lie through her teeth._

She doesn’t realize she’s said so aloud until Margaery furrows her brows and turns to look out the window. Sansa immediately feels guilty for it.

It wasn’t as if Margaery wasn’t trying with her. In fact, the Black Widow seemed to go out of her way to cater to Sansa. She’d include her in jokes—mostly ones that she was the butt of—invite her to lunch on days off, and had even tried to set her up with a few boys (and girls) from the office, which _no she couldn’t because that would be betraying his memory and she would never do that never let go of him—_

Sansa breathes and steadies her thoughts.

Margaery Baratheon wanted to be Sansa’s _friend_ , not just her teammate, like the rest of the Avengers. And Sansa would’ve been happy to let her if it weren’t for that incident with Salladhor Saan and the Lemurian Star.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and _means_ it. “I just don’t know how you do it.”

Sansa tries to elaborate, but Margaery’s already watching her with a small smile lingering at the corner of her lips.

“I find that it's easier to keep your true self buried under several layers of untrue selves,” she says. “To protect yourself.”

“That’s not a good way to live.”

“No. But it’s a good way not to die.”

The rest of the drive to the abandoned military base is quiet, and Sansa thinks that maybe Margaery has a point.

The coordinates to the military base niggle at Sansa’s memory, and her suspicions are confirmed when she sets eyes on the place where it had all began. Where she had barged into Colonel Jeor Mormont’s training base and demanded that she be shipped off to England right alongside her fiancé. Where Maester Luwin had set eyes upon a gangly red-headed girl and seen something beyond the physical.

“ _There are so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we really need is a woman._ ”

That’s when she notices the building that shouldn’t be there, and they discover a Hydra base hidden inside a SHIELD base hidden inside a SSR base.

Margaery mutters, “Base-ception.” Sansa’s already stepping through the elevator threshold and marching up to the ancient—Margaery assures her—computer. She plugs the flash drive into the remarkably modern outlet, and the machinery whirs to life.

Sansa doesn’t know what shocks her more: that the computer was actually Doctor Qyburn— Roose Bolton’s right-hand man—or that the Red Skulls’s Hydra had survived through infiltrating SHIELD since its genesis.

Sansa wants to rage. She wants to destroy every single machine in that room. She wants to set fire to the entire facility and then set fire to its ashes because _this is what I died for this is what Willas died for and nothing’s changed oh god_

But she can’t linger on it because SHIELD—Hydra, she reminds herself—has sent a bogey headed straight for the base, and she’s ducking through a ventilation shaft with Margaery just as the world around her erupts into flames.

They barely manage to get past the STRIKE team, and fate sees them at Sarella Sand’s doorstep.

The dark-skinned woman greets them with a confused smile, eyes lingering on their dust-covered clothing and beaten up faces, but ushers them inside without a complaint as soon as they make it clear that time is of the essence.

They wash-up, find out that Sarella _never said pilot_ , and head after the only lead they have: Walder Frey.

He tells them everything they need to know about Project Insight, Qyburn’s algorithm, how it targets threats like Tyrion and Jaime Lannister, Brienne Tarth, Melisandre of Asshai and herself—they don’t even have to throw him from the roof like they had planned—and the four of them are in Sarella’s car, headed toward the Triskelion to save the modern world as they know it. Again.

“They’ll kill you before you set foot in the building, _heh_ ,” Walder Frey says, then gulps. “Hydra doesn’t like leaks.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he’s thrown out of the passenger window.

“Holy _shit_!” Sarella presses the breaks, and their unwanted passenger is launched onto the road in front of them. He doesn’t land on his feet, but his metal arm catches on the concrete and rights him before the fall can do any real damage.

Sansa levels her gun at the Soldier, but something collides with the rear of their car and sends them barreling out onto DC traffic.

Sansa takes the brunt of the fall, protects Margaery with her shield because she hasn’t been fragile since Maester Luwin turned her from Sansa Stark into Captain America. And then she’s on her feet, fighting against the Soldier with everything she’s got while Sarella and Margaery take care of his goons.

There’s a familiarity to his movements that makes Sansa pause. A swiftness and strength that mirrors what she saw in Roose Bolton the first time they went up against each other on that causeway long ago. Sansa thinks, as she ducks a swipe of the Soldier’s knife and a kick that would’ve caved in her ribs, that maybe Maester Luwin’s serum didn’t die with him.

But then the Soldier’s mask comes off, and Sansa falters for an entirely different reason.

“ _Willas_?”

A pause.

“Who the hell is Willas?”

He raises his gun—Sansa can’t move, her feet are stuck, her breath is coming in short gasps—levels it right at her, and just as his finger twitches on the trigger, Sarella Sand is barreling through the air and kicking him into the pavement.

A moment later, they’re surrounded by SHIELD agents bearing the STRIKE symbol, and Harry Hardyng has got a gun to the back of her head.

Sansa can feel the tears building behind her eyelids as she’s shoved into the van. She doesn’t know why she’s crying, what she’s feeling—relief?pain?anger? _dread_?—but she wants it to end. She just wants things to go back to the way they were before Hitler tried to take over the damn world. As she watches Margaery bleed out from a wound in her shoulder, leaning heavily on Sarella, she knows that she can never go back.


End file.
